Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday June 20 2018 i The Hollywood Reporter

California tripled its production tax credits in 2014 to $330 million per year in what a June 14 Milken Institute report calls a “highly successful” bid to keep ever more film and television projects from decamping to New York, Atlanta, Canada and the U.K. But Georgia ($600 million in 2016) and New York ($420 million a year) still dole out more and offer more lucrative credits. With a 2020 expiration just around the corner, the Golden State once again was under pressure to respond. And so, on June 18, the legislature passed a bill extending the credits to 2025 but retaining the annual cap and modestly increasing the percentage credit for shoots outside Los Angeles. That doesn’t move the needle much, but it should help retain productions. Sony’s Quentin Tarantino…

Number One Chinese Restaurant (HENRY HOLT, JUNE 19) BY Lillian Li AGENCY CAA This comic debut set in a beloved D.C.-area restaurant features sparring brothers, illicit lovers and scheming staff — echoing other broad-appeal Asian-American stories that have recently caught Hollywood’s eye (Crazy Rich Asians, The Wangs vs. the World). She Was the Quiet One (ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, JULY 18) BY Michele Campbell AGENCY ICM Partners Elite New England boarding school. Check. Wild rich kids. Check. Hazing. Of course. Campbell’s follow-up novel to It’s Always the Husband offers a twisty teen-led plotline that’s a throwback to Cruel Intentions and Wild Things.…

Mark and Jonnie Houston, known for innovative L.A. hotspots from Harvard & Stone and No Vacancy to the brand-new Madame Siam Sideshow Emporium, will open On The Record, or OTR, inside the newly renovated Park MGM resort (formerly the Monte Carlo) on New Year’s Eve. Adjacent to the Park Theater — home to a December residency by Lady Gaga — the 11,000-square-foot club will join a Roy Choi restaurant, an Eataly, and Daniel Humm and Will Guidara’s NoMad Restaurant and Bar (a NoMad hotel-within-the-hotel also will unveil rooms and suites later this year). Partiers will enter OTR via a functioning record store; inside, the club will pay homage to the music of different eras. At the Palms Casino Resort, a $620 million redo that recently introduced a chic shark bar…

“I’m sick of fucking being humble. I really am.” CATHERINE ZETA-JONES The actress, at a SAG-AFTRA Foundation FYC event for Cocaine Godmother, explaining why she has decided to let her ego run loose, adding: “So sorry I’m rich, so sorry I’m married to a movie star, so sorry I’m not so bad-looking.” “That is what my tweet referred to — the anti semitism of the Iran deal.” ROSEANNE BARR The disgraced sitcom star, claiming on Twitter that her racist post comparing Valerie Jarrett to a Planet of the Apes offspring was actually a commentary on prejudice. “If I gave two fucks about streaming numbers woulda put Lemonade up on Spotify, fuck you.” BEYONCE The singer, explaining — with a lyric in “NICE,” a duet with husband Jay-Z from their album Everything Is…

Bob Greenblatt held court in a booth at Culina for lunch. … Oprah Winfrey stopped by Paley to join will.i.am and friends for dinner. … Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson were at Mastro’s Beverly Hills. … Courteney Cox enjoyed dinner at Il Piccolino. … Emma Watson checked out Vespertine.… Sharing the room at Mr Chow were Rob Lowe and Jamie Erlicht, who sat with Zack Van Amburg.… In New York, Lorne Michaels was at East Hampton Grill in the Hamptons. … Bruce Springsteen popped by Fred’s. … Lady Gaga was at Beauty & Essex. Tony Bennett was also there. HOT NEW RESTAURANT Punta Cabras The Quick Pitch Escape south of the border at this Baja-inspired SaMo spot. Chef Daniel Snukal (Urusawa, LudoBites) is at the helm with a menu that…

“He’d been a White House fellow as well, so he had a unique connection with the program,” Conde says of Colin Powell, for whom he worked in 2002. Conde was honored by the Center for Communication in 2017 for creating opportunities for underserved youth. Conde says the books on display in his office emphasize leadership and management styles that have inspired him. A vintage photo of 30 Rockefeller Center in December 1931, when demolition workers at the construction site pooled their money to buy a Christmas tree. Conde christened Telemundo’s new headquarters, dubbed “30 Rock of the South,” during a day-long April 9 celebration. Cesar Conde could be Spanish-language TV’s secret weapon. In the five years since he left Univision for onetime underdog Telemundo, the exec (upped to chairman of…

JASON BLUM PRODUCER When Blum optioned Sharp in 2011, he planned to make a movie. Noxon convinced the genre producer to rethink it for TV, allowing it more time to breathe. Years later, the package — with Adams convinced to produce and star — yielded an intense bidding war between HBO and Netflix. PATRICIA CLARKSON ACTOR Adora The Six Feet Under Emmy winner plays Camille’s high-society mom, who’s still haunted by the death of Camille’s sister. Adams says their scenes together were the most challenging given the nature of the fraught mother-daughter relationship; Noxon notes they were the hardest to watch. JESSICA RHOADES PRODUCER Noxon describes Rhoades, who was on set daily, as “the glue that held this project together.” She’d just started as Blumhouse’s TV head when Noxon came…

The showdown between Comcast and Disney to acquire 21st Century Fox will have a major effect on the future of Hulu. Since each of the three companies currently owns a 30 percent stake, whichever wins Fox is set to take control of the over-the-top service, which on May 2 revealed that it had crossed the 20 million subscriber mark. Disney has been keen on rivaling Netflix by seizing command of Hulu in its Fox deal and using the acquisition to beef up the content for its own streaming service. Comcast, meanwhile, also stands to benefit in the age of cord-cutting. “The combination of content of Hulu, Sky’s Now TV and Hot Star in India would leave Comcast well positioned in the global OTT market,” Jefferies analyst John Janedis says. Some…

Jennifer Lee/Pete Docter Bob Iger promotes the Frozen co-director and Up filmmaker to chief creative officers for Disney Animation and Pixar, filling the void left by the outgoing John Lasseter. John Martin As the AT&T-Time Warner deal closes, the Turner CEO, who joined the company in 1993, exits as John Stankey takes over the rebranded WarnerMedia businesses. Baran bo Odar/Jantje Friese The creators of the German sci-fi drama Dark score Netflix’s first European overall deal, joining super-producers Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy in the streamer’s growing arsenal. Chris Hardwick After an assault claim by ex-girlfriend Chloe Dykstra, the Nerdist founder sees his talk show pulled by AMC as NBC mulls what to do with his game show The Wall. Showbiz Stocks $15.20 (+6%) GAMESTOP (GME) Private-equity groups are reportedly discussing…

Arguably the biggest trend in the Chinese film business of the past two years has been the market’s rapid diversification. While the Chinese box office (ticket sales hit $8.59 billion in 2017) once was exclusively dominated by Hollywood tentpoles and local blockbusters, filmmaking from various corners of the world — including India, Southeast Asia and Europe — and in scale and styles outside the tentpole mold, such as local art house or international prestige drama, have begun to connect with mainstream Chinese moviegoers. Yet some genres remain conspicuously underrepresented — including horror movies. Now, Hollywood’s premium purveyor of the form, Jason Blum, is looking to fill that void. Blum touched down at the Shanghai International Film Festival on June 18 to unveil an ambitious partnership between his Blumhouse Productions and…

I was raised with this idea that women don’t work well together — not by my parents, but environmentally, societally and culturally, I was conditioned to think that women didn’t get along. Female relationships are often depicted on film as contentious (unhinged jealousy, competing for the same man, same job, that dress at a sample sale), and somehow that narrative penetrated my own way of thinking. The only way to get a seat at the table is by elbowing other women out of the way. This business can feed into that falsehood. The way actors procure jobs is how this narrative can be born, bred and fed. Competing is part of the game — and in trying to be the one who is chosen, it can be hard to not…

Between seeing his first feature film green-lighted and day one of production, Bo Burnham had eight months to figure out how to direct. Naturally, he turned to the web. “The internet has always been the place where I’ve learned everything,” says the 27-year-old comic, who came up on YouTube, posting hyper-literate songs like “I’m Bo Yo” (28 million views; his total is 228 million) from his suburban Boston childhood bedroom. He skipped college in favor of stand-up, a New York Times best-seller (Egghead, a collection of poetry, prose and drawings), an MTV series and roles in films like The Big Sick. So Burnham devoured hundreds of hours of online lectures, tutorials and directors’ commentary to prep for Eighth Grade, a comedy about middle school, out July 13. “I was very…

Costumes, props and timepieces from the estate of Jerry Lewis will be auctioned off live and online June 22 at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. The legendary comedian, who called Sin City home, died in August at age 91. Lewis’ daughter Danielle says among the items most sentimental to her father in the Julien’s sale is an 18 carat gold Cartier watch given to him by Sammy Davis Jr. “My father was a big watch person. They were probably his biggest collectibles besides his Canon cameras,” she says. “This watch was given in 1988 to my dad when he and Sammy Davis Jr. first performed together at Bally’s in Las Vegas. They were like brothers and loved each other very much.” Also on auction will be Lewis’ guns, jewelry, sunglasses…

Jurassic World Los Angeles, June 12 Dino-Mite Premiere Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom roared at its downtown L.A. premiere, where Chris Pratt (2), Bryce Dallas Howard (4) and Jeff Goldblum (5) waved to fans on a gray carpet, but the most photographed star may have been the life-size Lego replica of Blue, the velociraptor at the heart of director J.A. Bayona’s (3) sequel. “This is a parent and a child who have gone through a lot,” Pratt told THR of his character’s relationship with Blue in the follow-up, which opens June 22 in the U.S. and picks up where the dinosaurs left off in the previous film: on the island, only threatened by an erupting volcano. Guests viewed dinosaur fossil replicas from Fallen Kingdom outside the Walt Disney Concert Hall screening,…

Curtis Stone • FOR ASSORTED MEATS TIP Buy the right meat for your grill, says the owner of Hollywood butcher shop Gwen: “If you have a Big Green Egg or good kettle grill, a brisket is beautiful,” he says, adding for even caramelization, “consider steaks sous vide,” i.e., first putting well-seasoned meat inside a plastic bag to simmer in 55-degree water. TOOL A blow poke to “wrangle your fire,” he says. Roy Choi • FOR POULTRY TIP Cut the bird in half, “marinate and don’t be shy on salt and pepper,” says L.A.’s A-Frame chef (Jon Favreau is a fan), known for beer-can chicken. “Garlic is a friend, so is lemongrass. Grill low and slow.” Try quail or Cornish game hens. TOOL Southern Cali is his secret weapon: “It’s all…

DRAMA SERIES DANIEL J. FIENBERG Last year, an influx of new shows inspired Emmy voters to usher in recognition for the likes of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Crown, Stranger Things, This Is Us and Westworld on the drama side and Atlanta for comedy. This year should see some category turnover as well, with Veep and Master of None leaving a comedy vacuum and Better Call Saul and House of Cards not airing in the eligibility window for drama. Let’s start with drama. Is it going to be as simple as former winner Game of Thrones and departing favorite The Americans sliding in to join the sparkly 2017 freshman class? TIM GOODMAN It’s best not to assume anything with any awards organization. That said, the Emmys are slightly more predictable and…

I n the late 1980s, desperate to resuscitate a floundering studio that had veered off-course under the leadership of Chariots of Fire producer David Puttnam, Sony Corp. made a move for the big time. Having newly purchased Columbia Pictures from the Coca-Cola Co., Sony offered the posts of chairman and CEO to the double act of Jon Peters and Peter Guber, producers of such blockbusters as Batman and Rain Man. Then the new owner discovered that the partners were still under contract to Warner Bros., which had no intention of letting them go. By the time a deal was done, Sony had agreed to buy Guber and Peters’ company for $200 million and pay Warners some $500 million in assets, on top of the $3.4 billion it had already paid…

Deal of the Week OPRAH? APPLE. APPLE? OPRAH. WHAT’S IN IT FOR EACH OF THE TWO TITANS In a pairing of two of the biggest global brands, Apple and Oprah Winfrey could both stand to benefit from their new multiyear content partnership. Under the pact, Winfrey, 64, and her Harpo Inc. will create original content for the tech giant. That includes film, television, apps, podcasts, books and other content that could easily be distributed on Apple’s all-encompassing platform. In line with the mega-producer’s longtime business model, Harpo will retain 100 percent ownership of all content created for Apple. While Netflix poached Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy from their longtime homes at ABC Studios and 20th Century Fox Television with nine-figure deals in an effort to own more of its originals,…

We were Billy’s first gig. We got him into showbiz. He started answering our fan mail, and my mom was so impressed, she soon had him writing our press releases. One thing led to another, and he became our manager. He was a master of imaging — he was responsible for getting me on the cover of all those teen magazines during the Puppy Love era. But he was also a part of the family, like one of the brothers. We always called him “Fish” — that was our nickname. Sammeth somehow turned into “Salmon” and that turned into “Fish.” And he always called me “Kid,” even when I was 60. In fact, that was the last word he said to me when we talked a couple of weeks ago.…

It’s not 20 minutes into our interview, and already Gillian Flynn is in tears. The best-selling author of Gone Girl is huddled with Mad Men writer Marti Noxon and five-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams in a private room at a bustling Brentwood steakhouse. They’re here to talk about their prestige murder mystery, Sharp Objects, adapted from Flynn’s lesser-read debut novel about a deeply troubled newspaper reporter, Camille Preaker, who cuts and draws all over her skin. On the surface, Flynn, 47, wouldn’t seem to have much in common with the character — except that she too was once a journalist, for Entertainment Weekly, back in the early aughts — but Camille clearly is close to her heart. “The reason I wrote about the scars,” she says, “was because I felt…

Europe is a key battleground as Disney and Comcast tussle over large chunks of 21st Century Fox, including its 39 percent stake in European pay TV giant Sky, the high-end content juggernaut behind hits like the Julia Stiles starrer Riviera and the period drama Britannia. For those who don’t follow the situation closely, it is a bit complicated. Comcast on June 15 got European Union clearance for its bid for Sky, which trumped Fox’s December 2016 offer for the 61 percent of the European pay TV giant that it doesn’t own yet. The U.K. culture secretary on June 19 unveiled a Fox agreement to sell Sky News to Disney with improved funding — roughly $130 million over 15 years — and other commitments to seal government clearance for Fox’s Sky bid, a final…

Shaquille O’Neal ambles up to a table at The Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills and somehow squeezes his 7-foot-1, 325-pound frame into a small wooden chair. Although he’s a regular here and always sits in the same wood-paneled alcove off the main dining room, patrons stare, offer high-fives as he passes and even cheer like it was the Lakers who were in the process of crushing the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals and not the Golden State Warriors. While most athletes bristle at being touched, the basketball Hall of Famer and current Turner broadcast analyst embraces it. “I don’t do entourages. I don’t do security,” he says. “I’m a people person. The word ‘mobbed’ is not in my vocabulary.” Without glancing at the menu, he opts for organic chicken…